Grayson Earle
why don’t the cops fight each other?

why don’t the cops fight each other? is a documentary about an attempt to modify the relationships between police officers in the video game Grand Theft Auto V (GTA).

Earle’s work engages the “modding” scene for GTA, a community of people and tools that enable players to make modifications (or mods) to the game world. While these mods are almost limitless in scope, one property is completely immutable: the police officers in the game will never fight each other. Through an exhaustive forensic analysis of the game’s source code and engagement with mod developers, the artist demonstrates the extent to which the cultural imagination concerning the real world police is projected into the game space.